Chiaroscuro
by burst 'N bloom
Summary: A warm black shadow twisting around his body like a prayer. A waxy stare from inside a coffin. A shadowless body in a brilliant white room. "It's ok, Aomine-kun. Everything will be alright. I'm here,". AU. AoKuro.


_Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, the anime/manga, or any other such things. I do, however, own the story/idea/plot._

Well... I'm doing it. I'm being the most literal person in the world. I haven't written fanfics for this fandom or really anything in a while, so forgive my bumbling failings haw. I don't think this will be too long a story; I'm setting the bar low. Leave a response on whether this merits completion :) can't/won't/shouldn't make any promises though.

_"Dai-chan, something's wrong with you…" "Shit, I'm sorry I'm so sorry I-" a warm black shadow twisting around his body like a prayer. A waxy stare from inside a coffin. A shadowless body in a brilliant white room. "It's ok, Aomine-kun. Everything will be alright. I'm here,"_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

It's Momoi who notices it first, her eyes flickering with realization as she lies there prone, half naked and writhing underneath him with a peach blush dusting her otherwise pale cheeks. That's when she sees it, _gets_ it, understands it.

When the gravity of the situation hits her like an impact to the head, the color drains from her face as she bolts upright. Her slender fingers slowly dig and tighten at the sheets. She leaves heavy creases in the cotton spread.

"Ha? What the hell's wrong with you?" The boy towering above her growls. A scowl tugs down at the corners of his lips and his muscles tense in unveiled agitation. Momoi bites her lip, kneading the pink flesh and looks away, eyes flickering towards the matte black floor lamp standing upright at the corner of his room.

"Ah, sorry Dai-chan! I just…" She trails off before starting up again rather slowly - searchingly, the way one would approach a predatory animal. A wounded beast. "You know, ever since the accident, I've been getting this weird feeling every time I look at you… It's like you're not really here. Something just doesn't look right," She steals a peek upwards and catches the increasingly irate look on his face.

"_What_? Seriously, the fuck's with that? What, is it this scar? You want I can put a band-aid on it if it freaks you out that badly." He runs a hand through his hair while rolling his eyes, until something darkens in him – like a light switch forcibly cut off. A slow unsettled smirk lifts up the corners of his lips, a growl starting at the base of his throat. His eyes flash. "Or is it the leg? Yeah? This mangled limb scare you that much? You think I'm not me without my leg too? Just like everyone else?" Momoi flinches at the soft low purr before waving her hands in immediate denial.

"No! God, stupid Daiki, no, it's not like that!" A soft sigh issues from her lips and she throws a cautious glance at him before she slides herself off from the bed, picking up her clothes from the floor. She fastens the plastic clasp of her bra and snaps the straps over her thin shoulders, refusing to look at him. "It's just… I don't know, Dai-chan, maybe my eyes are going bad, but…" she pauses and turns around, glances at the floor lamp again, then at him, and finally at the rumpled bed she was just lying naked on. "Dai-chan, you… you don't have a shadow anymore." It comes out as a hoarse whisper, but he hears it loud and clear. Doesn't miss a beat.

Aomine's eyes track the same trajectory hers had, his eyes slowly sweeping across the room from the lamp to where he's seated now at the bed, and as he looks all around him, he realizes that it's true and not just a bad joke. Momoi isn't lying. Aomine Daiki no longer has a shadow. There are no dark outlines of his figure cast onto the bed, just the contours of the disturbed sheets and the warm yellow light hitting his bed like his body is just a clean thin sheet of glass that leaves no impression of his existence whatsoever. A cold sweat prickles at the back of his neck, glistens on his forehead. His palms start clamming up.

His head jolts back towards Momoi, to where she's standing there buttoning up her ivory blouse and tossing her hair out from under the fabric. The shadow extending from her bare feet on the ground mimics her every movements, an elongated, almost elegant shape following the swing of her hands, the soundless shimmer of her hair. She turns around to him before she directs her gaze back at the ground.

"I… don't really get what's happened to you, but Dai-chan, please, figure out what's going on with you because right now, something's wrong. And it's scaring me." The door creaks open, and his manager strides out, leaving Aomine to slump down onto his bed with no easy look on his face. His dick is limp now – how could it not be – and his ears are pounding heatedly like a jackhammer in his brain. He leans down from his perch to pick up his boxers from the floor and inspects them in wonder against the light, watching the dark shape of them take form on his carpet. When he tugs them back on successfully and grabs his crutches to stand back up, he can't help himself from looking back to where his shadow should be. And it's exactly as he imagined it would be: the lone black imprint of his boxers floating in midair between the thin lines of his crutches, as if some mischievous poltergeist were hoisting the three objects up in thin air.

Aomine leans against his left crutch and runs a calloused tan hand through his hair before swearing loudly.

What the fuck is this.

* * *

It's hot. Painfully so, and the thin hoodie and jeans he's wearing only act to bolster the heat of the summer's day. It can't be helped though - he thinks - or else his lacking shadow would just show some floating black clothes, his crutches, and a pair of shoes. His hands, he can't do anything about. He tugs his sleeves down over his knuckles and growls at the sweat beginning to bead at his forehead.

It's fucking _disgusting_.

He shifts the crutches underneath his armpits and stares out at the sun, a glistening beam of light framing his body. He stares at his feet, swathed in sneakers and socks, the rubber soles of his two support lines, and follows the quiet streaming blackness emanating from his shoes - stops only tenuously to wonder what he's doing outside.

Realistically speaking, he knows that if there's a cure for whatever's wrong with him, it's not going to be found outside, but rather in some scientific laboratory of some kind, but he can't be fucked to care. He tried googling the issue but only came up with crackpot trolls on internet forums with worse spelling than even himself, some obscure graphic design glitches, and a few angst-ridden, pathetic preteen poems that he didn't really care for.

He swings his crutches forward easily, the hood of his sweatshirt clinging to the top of his head lazily as he moves forward with surprising grace. Trust Aomine Daiki to somehow still fluidly athletic even while on crutches.

He's not quite sure where he's going with his limbs mangled as they are; he should be heading in for physical therapy, but he can't bring himself to do it. The doctors' words weigh on him like Atlas's burden, his team a cluster of furious boys more angry than concerned about his health.

He goes without thought, directing a cab driver, and it's only when he's in front of a glistening high building that he realizes what he's done - and not for the first time. Aomine pays the driver a wad of cash and gets out, staring at the building. This is where he was treated. This is where he died.

He hops in through the handicapped door, a door he used to play with when he was a kid, pressing the automatic button and zipping through, as if by magic he'd propelled the glass arms open. There are only a few thoughts in his mind when he comes in. He says his speech to the young intern at the desk, a daily missive, and watches the girl's soft hands flip through files, sheaves of paper flickering up, to settle down at the name he mentions. The name he learns. She hesitates today, a quiver appearing on her lip as she readies herself for what he knows is coming.

"Ah, I'm so sorry, but it appears Kuroko Tetsuya-san passed away yesterday afternoon." Everything is like a dream, a glass facade, something with a hairline fracture growing wider and wider. He watches this woman through the clear filament, this impersonal glass wall. "Were you close?" His neck cricks forward like clockwork. "I'm so sorry for your loss. If it's any consolation, he seemed to be at peace when he went. They'll be holding the funeral in a few days, if you'd like the information…" He stands there frozen, his hood slack atop his head, lips tight, knuckles white. She fumbles with a pen and tidily sweeps a series of characters onto a notepad, tears it along the pale glue-line and hands the piece of paper to him. "His mother said you'd come by. She wanted us to pass this information on,"

He takes the sheaf without reading and folds it in half, stuffs the thing into his pocket and swings himself away, crutches hot at the rubber handle and bruising his arms, a harsh sunlight beaming down on his shadowless form.

Hollow. That's the word he feels at the moment. More hollow than he's ever felt before in his life.

Kuroko Tetsuya is a name he's never going to forget, he thinks to himself. This unnamed feeling he carries is so dense he can barely breathe. The slim sheet of paper in his pocket weighs on him heavier than anything he's ever touched before in his life, a pale blue flame that boils under his skin when he grazes at its edges with his long fingertips.

These aren't tears, he thinks calmly. Not tears.

He reads the piece of paper 5 times as he sits in the taxi cab on his way home.

_Aomine Daiki,_

_The Details_

_Date: July 27th_

_Time: 3:00pm_

_Location: St. Paolo Cemetery_

"_I would really appreciate it if you came out, if only for my sake. I know Tetsuya would really appreciate it as well."_

These aren't tears.

He reads the scrap of paper 4 more times.

* * *

Satsuki clicks around on her laptop, the quiet clacking of the keyboard thrumming in her room. She feels somewhat embarrassed for her behavior in front of Daiki, but what's done is done; all she can do now is try to help him out with what skills she has in information-gathering.

It's as she expects though; shadows don't just walk off on their own. The laws of physics state that whatever has happened to Daiki is supernatural at best, surrealist art at its most unsettling, and no scientific journals or pending experiments have ever seen any such curiosities.

Part of her thinks it was just a dream or a trick of the light, but judging from the fact that Daiki hasn't contacted her yet to either yell or apologize, she knows he realizes something's wrong.

Wounded animals do tend to behave uncharacteristically, after all.

When she opens up her primary email account, she sees that she has received a response email from one of her contacts - a doctor her mother is friends with - and quickly scans the contents.

_Sent: July 26th, 2012. 12:24pm_

_Satsuki-chan,_

_ It's very nice to hear from you; I presume you and your mother are well? I'm pleased to hear about your venture in novel writing; a bold endeavor for a girl as young as yourself, and the premise is quite intriguing. I'd love to read a copy when you get around to finishing a draft. As for your question, I have to say I have never heard of a case of somebody's shadow disappearing or detaching from their body. Frankly speaking, that would be entirely impossible, unless the person's physical body disappeared as well - but of course, literature makes even the impossible possible. Perhaps this article I attached may be of some use to you? I'm not really one for creative thinking, but I thought it was interesting and you might be able to tie it into your piece. Let me know if you'd ever like to talk about the contents or if you need any more information. Best of luck to you and send my regards to your mother._

_Best,_

_Dr. Shinohara_

_File Attached:_

_ JSA-publication-2007-vol2_(im)perceptible+wavelengths+by+Miyako+juura .pdf_

She clicks the link and watches the words load on her screen. 32 pages.

She cracks her knuckles and sets her glasses on her face, face tense with concentration.

* * *

"Honey, are you going to physical therapy today?"

"Nah."

He hears the patter of his mother's slippers against the wooden floor and he knows she's standing at the foot of the staircase, looking - most likely - annoyed as hell.

"Daiki, don't you think you need to start trying to get better? I know it must be painful, but you can't keep putting this off. The doctor's said you might even be able to play basketball again if you stay at it for a while." He sighs and rubs a hand through his hair.

"I'm going to that kid's funeral in an hour. Gotta change."

A silent pause, a little longer than the natural ebbing of conversation.

"Oh my… He passed away?"

"A few days ago."

"Oh dear, should I come along?"

"Forget it, why whould you come along?"

_ "_I can't imagine how his mother must be feeling. Oh~" His mother tapers off and then he hears the shuffling of her feet and he rolls his eyes. Why in the name of all that's good in the world would his mother have any reason for coming along? She starts muttering quietly, pathetically. "If.. oh, you know, if even a little bit more of the impact had shifted, it might have .. could have even been you. Oh Daiki.."

_Shut the hell up. _

He slams the door shut by throwing one of his crutches against it.

Then he stares at his leg, his shadowless arm, and begins changing like a man given another chance at life. He's not even half sure that he can make it through this damn thing without breaking down or losing his head, but he knows that he needs to do this. Something gnaws him inside, tears him to pieces.

Once he finishes and wipes off the sweat from the exertion of tugging on nice clothes over ruined body parts, he drags himself downstairs and convinces his weeping mother not to come - that it doesn't make any sense for her to come - and trudges away outside in a sharp suit that hides his mangled thigh.

Getting out from the taxi at the cemetery, he notes that there are not very many people gathered at where the procession is taking place. As he quietly maneuvers his way around to the gravesite where a priest is peacefully giving a sermon to an audience of 15 people at most, Aomine heaves a sigh. He doesn't think he has the nerve to make himself known so he lingers nearby a large oak tree that hides him from the woman he knows as Kuroko Tetsuya's mother. She looks beautiful even from the distance, a periwinkle blue chignon at the base of her neck pinned up in a small black hat and a flattering black dress. A veil covers her face. He can't tell if she's crying or not, but when she turns around and sees him in the distance, she doesn't motion for him to come over. Her eyes are dull and wet.

It's a sign of understanding, he thinks. _She must hate me_, he thinks.

Aomine has never been to a funeral before and he's not sure whether his lingering by the tree off in the outskirts counts as _attending_ but when the few people begin quietly paying their respects one at a time, he hobbles over to the end of the line and at his turn, looks at the coffin where he knows that small boy must be lying in.

These aren't tears, he thinks.

He hates these clumsy crutches that prevent him from being able to look closer at the dead boy's face. He hates that the impact of the car couldn't have shifted just a little so that both could have been saved, or neither, or just this little guy who didn't deserve to be put into this claustrophobic tomb.

Kuroko Tetsuya's face is slightly waxen and shiny from refurbishing and reconstruction that isn't quite the face Aomine remembers seeing in the white car. He's dressed in a blue shirt and a white suit that compliments the pale ivory of his half artificial skin and the light blue of his hair, and Aomine Daiki doesn't have any real meaningful words left in him to say as he stares down into the velvet lined coffin.

"I'm.. fuck, fuck, I'm fuckin sorry. This should be me in there," he mutters like he's vomiting the words out, very quietly, and he can't speak anymore because something has lodged in his throat so he hobbles away with bleary vision and slumps down against the tree that he had been hiding behind letting his crutches clatter onto the dirt, unconcerned about the few people who stare understandingly at his lopsided, freakish retreating back. "Fuck,"

These aren't tears. They can't be tears. Why the fuck should _he_ be the one crying? Doesn't make one fucking bit of sense. He knows Kuroko Tetsuya's mother is watching him in that moment, the long minutes he spends slumped up against the tree with his face in his hands. He knows it, and he's ashamed at how pathetic he is, but he can't stop.

These aren't tears. They can't be tears.

* * *

"Ano… Can you hear me?"

Aomine stirs.

"Um, Aomine Daiki-san…"

He fidgets, and then slowly awakens to the blackness of his room. It almost sounds like someone's talking to him, a soft lilting dream-like voice drifting in between the four walls of his room.

"Sorry for waking you," the voice says gently.

Aomine blinks a few times, trying to adjust his bleary eyes and then flips on the small bed lamp sitting by his bed. His eyes fill with large colorful dots as his thoughts slowly clear up, and he surveys his surroundings. There's no one in his room. Visibly, at least.

"Well. So I've killed a guy, can't play basketball anymore, lost my shadow, and now I'm hearing voices. What next?" he grumbles, more irritated at being awoken by his own imagination than anything. It's almost a consolation even in his half-lucid state to hear that almost-faded voice he can't quite recall that sounds more like a salve or a balm than the horrible replaying sounds of the crash in any case. He fidgets, pulls his blankets tighter over his shoulders and smushes his face into his pillow.

"Ah, wait." The voice sounds again. The haze of sleep lifts from Aomine's mind and instead his nerves run on hyper-alert.

"Where the fuck are you? Who are you? Why are you in my room?" His blood runs cold in that instant, his words sounding a little too rushed to play it off as cool.

"Wait, Aomine-san. Please don't be hasty. I… I understand this might not make much sense; to be honest, I don't quite understand the situation myself. But please look at your carpet. I'm right there,"

Aomine stares at his carpet and sees nothing but a fuzzy black patch on his floor that he can't remember being there before.

"what."

"My name is Kuroko Tetsuya. And you are Aomine Daiki. It… seems you've lost your shadow?"

"What."

"I noticed you at my funeral. It's strange, not having a body anymore, but it seems that I am now a shadow without a body to attach to." The black patch starts to move around and stretch and contract into a shape that looks eerily more like the body of the small boy Aomine knows he saw lowered into the ground. "I suppose it isn't so bad. Very light and airy," the voice intones casually.

"… _What? Is this a fucking nightmare?"_

"That's not a very nice thing to say," the voice chides.

"I.. I _killed _you. I saw you being lowered 6 feet into the ground. Do you _really_ think you should be saying I'm _not being very nice?!"_ He hears a soft, slow exhale. The shadow must be sighing.

"I'll leave if that's what you want, but I thought it must be hard for Aomine-san to live without a shadow. I… just wanted to help you," A brief pause. "If you don't have a shadow, I'll be your shadow - my body has no use for it in the coffin. I've tried to reattach to my body a few times, but sitting around in that blackness got to be a bit lonely."

Aomine almost pisses his pants, but instead decides to turn off the light, look away from that body-shaped blackness sitting on his floor, and turn to his side on his bed, willing himself to fall asleep. The voice in his room is politely silent now; he can almost pretend this was just a bad trip. But somehow he can't help but feel the presence of _something_ in there with him and he involuntarily shivers. _Fuck, fuck, fuck this, this is just a nightmare. A freak dream. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming… Tomorrow, it'll all be just a bad dream. I'll hardly even remember._

* * *

Aomine wakes up with a vivid recollection of what happened last night - surprisingly so considering he has believed since the accident that he was incapable of dreaming - but quickly shakes it away.

"A fucking nightmare, that's all. I haven't dreamt in a long time, and of course that's the first kind of dream I get..."

"Aomine-san, as I've said, it's rude to call someone a nightmare." A voice chides him. It's _that _voice; he's heard it before. Fallen asleep to it. Something very wiry and fragile snaps inside him.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL **FUCK**?"

He can't stop the light from streaming in through his windows or the shape on his carpet from moving like a real human shadow, pacing around horizontally on the floor. Or the high-pitched wail coming from his throat.

"I understand this must be very confusing-"

"I'm.. I'm going insane. I'm talking to myself and I'm seeing things and hearing things. I'm going insane. Holy fuckin-" The shadow suddenly swoops over to him and surrounds him as if trying to suffocate him.

"Please calm down. _Please,"_

"Ok, ok. Ok. Ok. Uh, ok. I- explain this. I'm insane, right? I'm batshit nuts."

"No_._ You are _not_, you are fine. Please just listen to me."

"Nope, nope, not listening. I'm going to go shower and eat and pretend this isn't happening. Goodbye, insane shadow dream thing. Good fucking bye."

"… so you'll kill me and then pretend I don't exist?" It's soft, these words that the shadow speaks. So soft that Aomine almost doesn't catch it, but in fact he's been expecting these words all along and he hears them pounding inside of his chest, rattling his ribs.

Aomine stops fiddling with his crutches and turns to look at the human shaped black shadow with something he can't describe prickling at his chest and throat and eyes. He breathes in.

"I…"

"I'm sorry, I know you didn't kill me. I just didn't know how else to make you stop and look at me." The shadow slinks around the room carefully, slowly. "I don't really know what I'm doing here or why I'm not with my body. It seems as though most people who die take their shadows with them since I haven't seen anybody like me around, but for whatever reason I managed to detach from mine. If you want proof that I'm legitimate and not a figment of your psychotic imagination, I can tell you things you would not have known."

"Like what?"

"I attended Teikou with you, same year. I played on the intramural basketball team and have a friend on the Meikou team that you played against last year. His name is Ogiwara Shigehiro; you may have seen him at my funeral. You can look him up. My father passed away 4 years ago due to a stroke in the same hospital I passed away in. I have a dog I adopted from Usagi Agency named Nigou, though my mother will be taking care of him alone now, I suppose. I'm rather fond of vanilla milkshakes."

Aomine blinks a few times and stares wordlessly at the shadow, unsure what to do with this strange motley of information. It's not enough to paint a picture of that blue haired boy he killed, but he thinks that if his understanding of Kuroko Tetsuya was a blank canvas, then he's begun mixing his paints.

"I'm… um.. sorry for taking away your life." Kuroko seems to ponder this lightly and remarks flippantly.

"My biggest sorrow is that I'll never be able to have a milkshake again. Please take responsibility for this travesty,"

"I'm… sorry?"

"I'm joking. Stop apologizing when it wasn't your fault,"

"...Sorry."

"I just said to stop.

"…Right, okay. So what now?"

"Go on with your life and I'll stay as your shadow. Ah, and your phone went off in the morning,"

He checks his phone and true to Kuroko's words, a text message from Satsuki appears on the front screen.

ahomine~ go to therapy today! ^^v i'll buy u dinner if u go!

He can feel the shadow twisting around and 'reading' the message. The soft almost-voice that placidly speaks resounds in his room again.

"You should listen to your friend," Aomine chooses to ignore this and throws his phone across the bed to the other side where it bounces lightly before nestling into the crack between the wall and the bed.

"Hey… Did you really go to Teikou? I've never noticed you before."

"… Somehow, that makes me feel a little bit sad."

Aomine has the decency to feel a little embarrassed and kind of half-shrugs, like _well, what can you do?_ and stares up at the ceiling. He sits himself back down on his bed and relishes the softness of the mattress and the room is quiet. Kuroko seems content to weightlessly lounge around on the carpet and for some reason this dislodges something in his chest, like someone unscrewed something loose in his heart and now it's rattling around inside him.

"Don't just hang out on the ground like that," He mutters, not sure whether to treat the shadow like a dog or a person or a nonentity. The shadow slides around the room curiously before settling by Aomine as if it were a person with no depth, just a big black shape cast onto his bed.

"_Will_ you be going to therapy?" Aomine sighs and shakes his head no, letting gravity pull its curse on the back of his head. He slumps back and stares at the ceiling, unsure why this feeling and why this _thing_ sitting by him doesn't make him feel any more horrified or empty than it does. Well. Maybe it does make him feel a little empty.

"I'm really sorry about uh.. your body again. I am. You weren't supposed to die. It should've been me," Kuroko is silent and hardly moves at all from his place on the bed. If Kuroko had a body… if Kuroko had eyes that Aomine could meet or a mouth that he could attribute these words to or a set of ears to hear this pathetic grumbling, Aomine thinks he'd have lost it. Maybe. If he hadn't lost it all already.

* * *

The day of the accident, Aomine Daiki was driving on a highway in Tokyo to get to an interview for a training job at a gym. His uncle's good favor and recommendation secured him a favorable interview, but he couldn't be damned to take public transit during Japanese lunch time rush to get there on time, so instead he had taken the family car out.

It was July 24th, a sweltering heat bore down on him through the open windows of his sedan along with a pounding, thrumming wind. The roads were relatively open and his stereo sang Nirvana to him, loud guitar riffs playing over the whistles of the wind. He clicked his nails against the leather wheel, lips parted to throatily sing along as he tapped his left foot to the beat.

Aomine was a fairly skilled driver for his age, if he had to say so himself, but one flaw he deigned to acknowledge was that he tended to be overly confident in his ability to maneuver the car around traffic, his skill in seamlessly merging lanes with the lightest touch. As he hummed along to the American rock song quietly, he glanced to his right side mirror before turning on his blinker– barely missing the white sedan thumping alongside him that he had somehow missed all the while. Taken aback, he shot a passing look at the driver to see a shock of light blue hair and calm azure eyes patiently staring ahead. Suddenly his breath hitched for a second – though he could never explain, to this day, why his breath had been caught that morning.

The other driver seemed to sense his audience and barely flicked his eyes towards Aomine shortly and that's when it happened: that half millisecond where he swore a jolt of electricity had shot straight through his spine and the half millisecond afterwards where - in his line of peripheral vision - he caught something loping towards him in a brilliant arc with a cold slicing fluidity.

He shouldn't have been looking anywhere but the road, he thinks. He should've been looking ahead. Because if he had, he would've noticed the metal debris flying high from the suddenly unlatched truck ahead of him and bouncing onto the concrete and he might've been able to swerve carefully out of its way. If he'd been looking, he would've noticed the curve of the road to the right, the concrete highway divider that inevitably would crush into his left leg at impact and the steel debris pipe that would crush his left thigh. Grind it down to soft tender meat.

It's a sickening crunch through his car that tells him he's done for, the wheels spinning out from under him. He feels a sharp recoil snapping, straining his neck, an impossibly loud smash like fireworks in his ears and he can't see past the thick viscous red clouding his vision, but he thinks he can make out the white car that was driving alongside of him somewhere in the wreckage. A heady lethargy takes over him, his cheek, his legs, his arms, and his torso burning in harsh red flames. But it's the leg that really makes him scream. The metal shards and glass pieces and freshly oozing blood. It's all of that. His eyes slip closed and he disappears into a mist of darkness and blood.

It's the end of the line, he thinks. All for some fucking interview at a gym he didn't even give a shit about.

What a bad joke.

* * *

_Um. I don't know. Well, I liked the idea, though it has to have been done before and with greater eloquence than I can muster. *shy&self-conscious* I'm so major angst._


End file.
